


Directional Theory

by rageprufrock



Series: Directional Theory [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-06-13
Updated: 2011-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:38:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A voter, x, plotted at -1 as an expression of aggregate ideological beliefs, will be far more likely to vote for a candidate Z, located as point -8 on the ideological spectrum than candidate Y, located at point 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Directional Theory

According to directional theory, voter behavior, if plotted on a Cartesian plane, will behave in a way similar but completely unrelated to any math Rodney has learned. A voter, x, plotted at -1 as an expression of aggregate ideological beliefs, will be far more likely to vote for a candidate Z, located as point -8 on the ideological spectrum than candidate Y, located at point 1.

"But when you take into account the absolute values--!" Rodney had argued.

"It's not about absolute value," The TA had said. "It's about ideological stances. The more extreme a candidate is, the more likely to excite a voter. Besides, the vast majority of people vote along party lines--if you imagine that points -10 through -1 are liberals and the positives were conservatives this would--"

"--Still make zero sense," Rodney had argued.

To Rodney, people in aggregate are statistics, and numbers bunch together and line up, crowd one another like giggling children, curve into the shape of a bell. Points at -8 are outliers, random flukes, something to be dismissed--not a point of destination.

But political science is an attempt to quantify human behavior, and the math is a language for perfect spheres and frictionless planes--even the silent, elegant universe too chaotic and jumbled to fit its cursive, trilling tones.

It's been years since Rodney was forced to take a political science course but he's finally starting to understand directional theory.

He's pulling on his clothes and fumbling around the room, looking for his shoes in the darkness, listening to the sound of his own breath too loud in the room, his blood rushing his ears. And every few seconds, he throws a terrified glance over his shoulder, looks at the disheveled bedcovers, the tousled hair on the pillow, the browned arm tossed across the mattress, feet and large toes sticking out from beneath a blanket. The whole room reeks of sex and McKay can't think of anything except for directional theory and extremes and making illogical decisions.

"Oh God, oh God," he mutters to himself, under his breath, and jams his feet into his shoes and slams his hand against the control module and falls into the hallway, hearing somebody murmur his name as he tumbles down the hall, tripping over his own shoelaces, leaning heavily against the wall.

And it's stupid--so completely stupid--but he skips his own doorway and winds down the hall, through a water-shadowed corridor and through a glass menagerie until he is leaning against a familiar wall, breathing hard and pressing his palms to the cool, curving surface until his heartbeat is under control and he won't give himself away.

Rodney, plotted along a number line, will fall at -1, and John, plotted on the same line, will fall at positive 2, and--

The door to Rodney's left slides open softly, and Rodney feels himself still like a frightened animal until he feels John's hand on the back of his neck and John's voice, soft and rough against his cheek, saying, "I was wondering where you went."

\--the scientist, the one with silver wire-rim glasses who carries around copies of Rodney's fucking senior thesis is at -8, too far away to make rational sense but so much easier to lean toward and Rodney doesn't know what the fuck he's doing anymore and why nobody's figured him out and killed him yet.

And Rodney melts into that touch, leans back, touch-hungry, and John laughs, presses a wet, affectionate kiss to the back of Rodney's neck and pulls Rodney into his room, helps him strip down to boxers and a t-shirt and tucks them underneath the covers. John falls asleep almost immediately and Rodney stays awake the rest of the night staring at the ceiling and waiting for the sky to fall down.

*  
The first time John kissed Rodney it was on a planet of ill-repute with girls with round and soft bodies dancing around them, their hips swaying and jingling with pieces of gems and gold beads, strung around their bellies, braceleting their wrists--gold dust framing their eyes.

John chose him, of everybody in that room, and Rodney doesn't know why.

*  
Rodney sees relationships in distinct stages, clearly delineated degrees. Before Atlantis, he dated, had sex sometimes, and occasionally even liked somebody enough to make an effort.

Because of John, Rodney does ridiculous things like getting up early in the morning and learning to squeeze his toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. He doesn't mind sex with the lights on because John's seen everything at its worst and its worser and John knows how Rodney eats under stress and likes him anyway. Rodney's never been to this place before, where he can tell who is touching him by the weight of the touch, where he casually picks up after John, where Rodney's happiness hinges on John's and that's the sickest part of all, isn't it?

John visits the labs in the deep of the drowsy Atlantis night and coaxes Rodney away from his simulations and computers, laughs and leads him down hallways dappled by sealight and pushes him into their bed--Rodney thinks in all different pronouns now--kisses him lazily, without any rush, and John tastes like fruit and toothpaste and the good life Rodney should be living and is too afraid to accept.

So when Rodney kisses back, he can taste his own desperation, his frantic, heated tugs at John's shoulders and arms, Rodney's fingers scratching down John's back with none of John's lazy certainty and that's how Rodney knows that John hasn't even thought that Rodney could be doing this to him, that John will never, ever suspect.

*  
The other worst part of it is that John is so happy.

He smiles and laughs and its enough to brighten a whole room, because not everybody on Atlantis knows John personally, but they all know of him, and John is their barometer, their hero. John offers to teach Teyla how to waltz and is incredibly saucy with Elizabeth and wanders around the empty parts of the city with Ronon, breaking things and pretending to really ashamed when he brings the malfunctioning parts up to the labs, his eyes wide with faux-guilt. He gives Rodney his deserts and sleeps more and Rodney has never seen John look so good.

John is so happy that the rest of Atlantis is all soft with his reflected light, like a bemused parent pleased by a happy child.

Rodney never knew he could make another human being that happy, but he has always known that thing about equal and opposite reactions and that's what's really killing him.

*  
When Hartsfield first reached Atlantis on the Daedelus, all big eyes and gap-jawed, Rodney thought this kid was going to be murdered within a week. And then Hartsfield came up to Rodney with a tattered copy of Rodney's master's thesis from fucking Northwestern, worshipful and babbling about Rodney's lifetime of scientific accomplishment until Rodney got sick of hearing it. The rest of the lab was in hysterics and John, where he was helping Zelenka with a new piece of yet unnamed Ancient technology in the corner, had been biting his lip so hard Rodney swore he'd tasted the blood when he'd shoved John into a corner later and kissed him soundly.

"He's cute, Rodney," John had said solemnly, letting Rodney slide his hands up the back of t-shirt, because John likes to make Rodney happy.

"Oh my God, am I going to get this sort of treatment all the time now?" Rodney had demanded, and back then, it seemed so completely ridiculous, because Hartsfield was practically an elementary school student and his voice cracked every time he spoke to Rodney and he got way, way too excited when he said the word 'wormhole.'

"I think it's funny," John had murmured, and looped his arms loosely over Rodney's shoulders, his smile all soft and friendly.

And it had been so disarming and sweet that Rodney had only mumbled into John's collarbone and spent the rest of their stolen make-out time hugging John in a fucking corner, which was another one of those stupid things only John made Rodney want to do.

When John had given Rodney a shove to go back to work, he'd laughed and called out, "Young love!" like some sort of sick, fatalistic joke and Rodney remembers he spent the rest of the day humming and laughing because it had been really, really funny back then.

But John doesn't look so good anymore, wearing worry-lines for Rodney and fretting over him, trying to give Rodney his space and give Rodney his attention all at the same time. John leaves Rodney snacks in the labs and reminds him to keep his blood sugar level even though John doesn't believe Rodney is hypoglycemic, pulls Rodney close to his chest when they sleep, like John's trying to take in whatever is upsetting Rodney.

*  
It was a few weeks after Hartsfield arrived that Team Slacker was on a planet with an unpronounceable native name in their native tongue when Rodney came back from rifling through his bag to find a rosy-golden princess stroking her fingers over the back of John's hand. He pushed her away very gently and said something that made her smile shakily before she nodded her head in understanding, and they shared an awkward laugh. They looked so unbearably beautiful together, all lit and gilded with firelight that Rodney's fingers went numb and he realized what was so wrong with this mathematical proof and spent the rest of the night curled into himself in his sleeping bag, staring up at a scattering of alien stars without stories and feeling like there's a clock ticking in his chest.

*  
It's the worst-kept secret on all of Atlantis, and the entire science team knows that Rodney is sleeping around.

It's so painfully obvious that Rodney has seen, with shocked, nauseated horror, Zelenka distracting John from paying attention to the way Hartsfield smiles at Rodney, touches Rodney's shoulder with a little too much confidence. Simpson has abducted John for long sessions in the children's area, where John can walk in and make things turn different colors and play different music, which delights him and makes him shine and makes Simpson glare at Rodney with even more hate than usual. The whole team pitches in to help Rodney keep his secret and Rodney knows it has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with keeping him out of trouble.

"Thank you for--" Rodney had started, the first time Zelenka had saved his ass.

"It was not for you," Zelenka had snapped, and slammed something shut harder than strictly necessary. "When do you plan to stop this nonsense?"

"It's none of your business," Rodney had muttered.

"Colonel Sheppard is our friend," Zelenka had said through gritted teeth. "It is our business."

Rodney had fumbled around with some random pieces of machinery until Zelenka had said, voice cool and tight, "You are not this person, McKay."

Zelenka's right, of course, Rodney's not this guy. He's not suave enough to pull this off and honestly, he doesn't have the energy to balance between a concerned lover and a secret fuck but he's not doing it because it's in his nature or anything, anyway.

"I hate lying for you," Zelenka had hissed, and he'd stormed away, taken the next day off.

Rodney hates it, too. He wishes they'd stop. Wishes they'd tell John so Rodney doesn't have to.

*  
Seven months after John leaned over to kiss Rodney, he was bleeding all over the place and all over Rodney's hands and by the time they got him into the infirmary Rodney smelled like copper and desperation and earth, brown and damp and suffocating. He spent two hours freaking out while John was in surgery to repair some tear that had sounded terribly life-threatening, though Carson kept assuring him it really wasn't as bad as it looked.

The thing is, Rodney knows even now, he never meant to sleep with Hartsfield, he'd just gone to the labs because he was used to it there, and he needed a little equilibrium.

"You should get some rest, Dr. McKay," Hartsfield had said, voice soft, and it'd taken Rodney until he felt the hand on the small of his back before he realized how close the other man was. "It must be stressful to be out in the field--if there's anything I could do," he'd offered eyes low and inviting and Rodney couldn't help but think how much easier it would be this way.

*  
On John and Rodney's eighteen month anniversary (if they kept track of that sort of thing) John walks into the lab and sees Hartsfield with one hand on the back of Rodney's neck and a smile on his face that gives them both away. Zelenka is on the mainland with Major Lorne and Teyla and a dozen other scientists so nobody stops him at the door and when Rodney realizes John is standing there there's a sickening sense of satisfaction because finally finally finally John knows.

And then Rodney jerks away, shoves Hartsfield from him and stares at John and the look in John's eyes as it fractures like a sky on the brink of a storm: about to break.

It's how he remembers that it doesn't matter if it's all in Rodney's head--it's never been just about himself.

But John looks for a moment like he's frozen and then like he's melting, his face crumbling for half a second, green eyes going gray and pale like Atlantis during winter and Rodney opens his mouth to try and say something but before he can do anything at all, John takes one step back, and says, "Sorry to interrupt," and turns on his heel to leave.

It's one o'clock in the morning and John was coming to take him to bed, Rodney thinks numbly. John would have smiled at him and touched the side of his face and maybe kissed the spot under his ear, and since it was dark and quiet John would take Rodney's hand and lead him through the hallways with Atlantis' blue and indulgent lights dimming and brightening at John's steps through the city. And then Rodney would mumble incoherently and John would yawn and they'd fall asleep together, lazy and ordinary and nothing special at all--

And when Hartsfield reaches out to touch Rodney again, Rodney jerks out of reach.

*  
In the morning, John's at the staff meeting, but it's like he's lost a fistfight with himself, because his eyes are shadowed and his mouth is in a thin, pale line and his hands are in tight fists in his lap. He doesn't look up and he speaks with military precision at Elizabeth and Ronon is at his side, like a mountain or a force of nature and radiating menace.

"Are you sure you're all right, John?" Elizabeth asks gently. She's careful, though, not to sound too concerned. "It's not critical that we take this mission immediately."

The thing about Atlantis is that nobody's business is anybody's business but everybody's. It's been exactly ten hours and everybody knows, Rodney can see it on their faces, in their sympathetic touches--in how the entire science team has been huddled together in the labs, shamefaced and miserable because they are part of the lie, too.

John smiles, and it looks like broken glass. "We'll be ready," John says, and Rodney thinks John means he's sorry for making Elizabeth worry. "I've been getting a little antsy--it'll be good to get out of the city, you know?"

"Colonel," Teyla says, and her voice is as kind as Elizabeth's.

John raises his eyebrows, but doesn't say a word.

Elizabeth looks at John hard, and he looks back up at her, eyes clear and calm and totally dead.

"Okay," Elizabeth finally says.

"Good to hear," John answers with a grin. "You worry too much, Elizabeth."

"Excuse me," Rodney says, and he bolts out of the room.

*  
The puddlejumper rule used to be everybody got a turn sitting in the co-pilot's seat--except when Rodney was flying and then everybody fought to sit furthest away from the window and John always got stuck holding the proverbial short stick.

The new puddlejumper rule seems to be that Rodney sits in the back, catty-corner to where John is flying and Ronon or Teyla form a protective bloc, because even if nobody knew everybody knows and Rodney just doesn't know how anybody expects him to function professionally.

"So what do we know about the Ougers," John asks, so casual and normal that it makes Rodney think for a minute that everything that has happened in the last day has just been a dream.

Teyla smiles, and it is small and secretive. "They're very festive people, Colonel," she says diplomatically.

"They're drunks," Ronon snorts. "Infamous for it."

John gives Ronon a raised, amused brow that makes something in Rodney's chest seize up.

"It was a rite of passage," Ronon says solemnly. "For all boys on Sateda."

"Right," John allows.

"They do like their spirits," Teyla compromises, but the smile on her mouth is lovely and sharp. "My people are very much looking forward to the fruits of this trip."

John grins. "I think we're going to like these people."

*  
Well, even if John doesn't, Rodney loves these people.

The first three hours after they stepped out of the puddlejumper were taken up with crushing boredom, because though the Ougers were pleasant enough their technology slipped them in with the Attic Greeks: great parties, good wine, fantastic olives and really shitty taste in art.

They are jovial and happy and it has not a little bit to deal with their constant ingestion of the sweet, fizzing wine they make by the barrel. John, who turns out to be a little bit a snob when it comes to liquors, calls it a sparkling red, which is apparently really popular on Earth in places like New York and Napa and San Francisco.

"Does this California place have a lot of wine?" Ronon asks between the third and fourth cup.

In the background, Teyla is doing actual trade negotiations with a slightly-more-sober leader. Rodney wonders how these people don't get constantly ripped off but they're all such charming, gregarious drunks Rodney figures anybody would feel bad pulling one over on them. John, Rodney knows, is also a charming, gregarious drunk, and Rodney is lucky they are on a mission because otherwise, John would be a charming, gregarious drunk to somebody other than Rodney--and nobody has ever been able to turn down John at his most adorable.

"Yeah, but not all of it is as good as this stuff," John says, and smiles thinly.

He hasn't looked at Rodney since the lab.

Rodney stares at his feet a little, at the dirt into which he's been toeing equations all night.

He wants, more than anything, for when the fire goes out and they retire to their rooms in the western wing of the cavernous mansions, Ronon and Teyla to disappear to their own rooms and to crawl into bed next to John, where they will fall asleep buzzed on alien wine and kiss one another, tasting the burn of liquor and fruit on each other's mouths. And John will say, "See, I knew we'd like this place," and Rodney will joke, "I think Ronon wants to fuck you," and they'll both fall asleep and wake up in the morning and Rodney will not be alone.

Instead, what happens is this:

Teyla herds them off to bed because she's the most sober one, and monitors their progress before she goes to sleep in a far room with large windows and big cushions. Rodney staggers toward John's because he suddenly decides that he will force John to forgive him and that they will get married in Vancouver and purchase a cat together. But when he gets to John's room, John is asleep, buried in blankets, expression fitful, and Ronon is curled up asleep near him, in a mountain of pillows, body tense and taut and when Rodney leans against the doorway, Ronon opens his eyes and says, "Go away, McKay," so Rodney does.

When he wakes up in the morning, Rodney's alone, and the sun is so white it looks like bleached bones in the desert.

*  
When they come back from the Ouger planet smelling like sunshine and the fizzy, sweet fruits they'd brought back as a goodwill gift from the people there, Elizabeth and Ronon and Teyla hovered over John, circling around him like smiling satellites, and the entire science gave Rodney a two-meter berth. Rodney hasn't had so much counterspace in a lab since he had mono.

The worst part is that he and John are putting on such a good show, having their petty professional arguments like they've always done, playing stupid math tricks, going on missions together, and the rest of the Atlantis is none the wiser.

It's just when they're alone, and there isn't a mess full of people looking that John pulls away, makes that extra space between them, looks like Rodney just threw a punch and turned John into one big bruise.

The second week of this, after Rodney has taken up drinking, he gets an email:

To: rodney.mckay@tardis.atlantis.sgc.gov  
From: john.sheppard@tardis.atlantis.sgc.gov  
Subject: [none]

How long?

Rodney thinks that it would be the easiest thing in the world to lie and say, "A month," or "Three weeks," or "It was only one time," and John would believe him because John wants to believe him and Rodney wants John so badly his skin hurts, his lungs ache, his fingers skate along computer keyboard with a phantom yearning.

He writes:

To: john.sheppard@tardis.atlantis.sgc.gov  
From: rodney.mckay@tardis.atlantis.sgc.gov  
Subject: Re: [none]

7 months.

And adds:

I'll never do it again.

Rodney reassures himself that it's the alcohol talking and spends the rest of the night staring at his email client. John doesn't reply and when Rodney goes to the morning staff meeting he finds out John's gone out to the mainland with Carson to see to the newest round of immunizations.

Rodney debates waiting around for John in the jumper bay until Ronon shows up and says, "Don't push it, McKay," and Rodney figures Ronon's right.

 

*

It turns out that Rodney needn't have worried because John is in his room waiting when he gets back to his quarter that night at half past eleven, and it is dark all around him like the heart of an eclipse.

Rodney wants to say, "Oh my God, I've missed you so much," and "You've forgiven me, right?" or fall to his knees, to press his face to John's thighs and claw at his forearms, to gasp for oxygen and beg and give up his dignity and just say "please, please, please."

John's hands are clasped together, knuckles white in the bluish light from an opened laptop on Rodney's desk, and he's looking downward at his boots and Rodney wonders when the last time he saw John anything but barefoot and loose in this room was--when was the last time they were so tightly closed up in front of each other behind closed doors.

"I was going to put all your stuff in a box and bring it over," John says finally, "but then I realized that you know--you never left anything."

Rodney's chest caves in.

The thing is, even when everything is going wrong and there is no hope at all there is still hope because John is there and John is orbited by miracles and improbable coincidences and such a fundamentally stupid optimism that the universe likes to curve for him, to reshape herself to fit his charmingly hopeful will. Rodney has learned, like a body memory, to know something will work out, to know that something will happen, to know that they will live, when John is there.

So maybe the worst part of all of this is that Rodney was waiting for John to say, "It's okay," when it's really not, and waiting for John to be miraculous once more.

"John--" he starts to say and it sounds like a saw on metal.

"I thought maybe, you know, a t-shirt or something," John murmurs, distracted, and his eyes are looking everywhere but at Rodney--and Rodney can imagine John tossing his own room with military ruthlessness, looking for a trace of Rodney and being devastated that there wasn't one.

"We were careful," Rodney says finally and he's astonished that his vocal chords still work.

John's nails dig into his own hands and Rodney wants to reach out to him, to uncurl John's fists and press open-mouthed kisses to the moon-shaped welts there, because Rodney knows they will be there. He doesn't have permission to do that anymore.

"I feel--kind of stupid," John says, and his voice is flat and schooled and it makes something in Rodney's chest wrench, because he's never managed to hurt anybody this much before. This is power like blowing up five-sixths of a universe, shattering and cruel and too much. "I was going to come here and ask you--" John stops himself, and his mouth twists "--but I'm not a big fan of making big, dramatic scenes. So I was just going to bring you your stuff and leave."

It kicks something in Rodney to high gear.

"I didn't--it wasn't. It didn't mean anything," Rodney says, and he's gasping around all the words he can't make himself say, all the desperate, panicking sobbing he wants to do. It suddenly feels like he's slamming up against a brick wall because Rodney has always known that Hartsfield means nothing--and it's shocking like cold water and the edge of a knife to realize that John doesn't, that from John's distorted view the whole world is different.

"Don't, Rodney," John says, and there's a warning in his voice.

"But you have to listen to me," Rodney babbles. "God, because it's true--he didn't--I don't even like him! We've never had a conversation--it's just--"

"I get that you're socially retarded, Rodney," John suddenly snaps, eyes blazing, "so I'll let you in on a little secret and that's that telling me that for you it was just sex does not make anything better!"

Rodney clams up, throat swelling like he's on the edge of anaphylactic shock, like he's about to slip under any minute, his skin all hot and swelling outward, too small to contain everything he's feeling under the surface.

"I didn't" Rodney tries again faintly. He wants to finish that sentence with, "love him like you," or "kiss him like you," or "think of anything but myself."

John sighs and he runs his hands through his hair and he curls over his own lap with such resignation that Rodney forgets what he is and is not allowed to do and goes over, automatic, because this is John and Rodney cannot see John hurt and not try to smooth it away. He puts his hands on the sides of John's face and rubs his face in John's hair and he tries to talk with the skin on his palms and the rub of his thumbs and the way his cheek presses against the wild brush of John's bangs to say all the things he can't form with words.

And then John makes a noise that sounds like it might be crying but Rodney never gets a chance to examine it because John's looking up, pulling him down, crushing their mouths together, the ridge of John's teeth behind his soft lips like a dull blade.

Rodney wants to say "wait," and "fuck you taste so good" and "oh fuck is this break-up sex?" but what he actually ends up doing is shoving John down onto the mattress, tearing at his clothes, because he's ravenous, so lonely that having even this is reminding him of all he's losing.

John, who laughs when they make love and likes kissing for hours and who has been known to play with Rodney's fingers for no reason other than to play with Rodney's fingers, is flipping them over, shucking off Rodney's pants and prying Rodney's hands off of his shoulders, wrapping one large brown fist around Rodney's wrists and holding them over his head. Rodney's never used the word ruthless to describe sex before but then he's never had John holding him down like this is just another mat exercise and going down on him, all teeth and harshness.

Arousal hits Rodney like a truck, with a shriek of metal and out of the blue, cold and almost painful and John's mouth brutal and he pushes the orgasm out of Rodney like he's forcing their old life out the door, and when Rodney comes with a gasp John is looking at Rodney like he's sorry he ever met him.

So it's no surprise when John shoves Rodney over, pushes him face-first into the rumpled sheets, and shoves two come-slick fingers into him. And Rodney's still riding his orgasm down so everything he feels is like a scrape of nails along his cock, and it jumps every time Johns scissors in and out of him, strung-out and turned on and so desperate for touch that this is good, too, even this is good.

By the time John pushes into him, all furious finesse and spit-slick skin Rodney decides this is the worst sex he's ever had, even through the haze of misery that's got him so turned on by the baseless hope for forgiveness he can barely see, barely hold himself up, barely feel anything but John pressing into him so roughly that it's a knife-edge between pleasure and pain that has Rodney rutting against the mattress, his cock hard and leaking against the sheets--begging for friction.

"Please," Rodney gasps, because he's going to go blind if he doesn't come. "Oh God, please."

And because John's always been a better person than him, John kisses the place where Rodney's neck meets his shoulder very softly and curls his fist around Rodney's cock and says, "Yeah, Rodney, come for me," and Rodney does.

They lay together just long enough for it to be awkward and painful to disengage, like their bodies are reminding them they don't fit anymore, like puzzle pieces with the edges all frayed, and John almost pads into Rodney's bathroom to get a towel to clean them up before he remembers what this was all about. So instead, John rolls off of the bed, pulls up his pants and puts on his shoes and sits there on the edge of the mattress, back to where Rodney is still flat on his face in bed, trying not to have an asthma attack.

"You can tell the science team I'm not mad at them," John says finally.

Rodney fumbles a little, reaches one hand out to put it on John's thigh, and John automatically closes his own palm on top of Rodney's, because if this is leaving then it's slow, because there are pieces that remember being together is wrong and other parts that don't understand why they've been pulled apart.

And John's palm is yearning on the back of Rodney's hand even as John says out loud:

"I feel really stupid, Rodney."

When John stands up their hands fall apart and Rodney's been wrong about everything, wrong about feeling bad every time before now, because Rodney's never broken something made especially for Rodney before, and he can't imagine how anything could hurt more than watching John check left and right in the hallway before he leaves and the doors close behind him.

 

*

So apparently they're not dating anymore and there's not going to be any protracted, public suffering on either of their parts. They do have important jobs and John is a fucking Houdini, not that he has to make much of an effort except when they're both hiding from each other and accidentally run into one another in the nexus of plumbing under the main city.

And hey, hadn't that been fun, to see John look even thinner than before, like he hasn't been eating or sleeping and Rodney wants to wrap his hands around John's neck, yell about how if he's going to make Rodney walk funny for three days and cry in the shower then he should have the decency to get on with his fucking life in a way that's not going to make Rodney continue crying in the shower.

"Colonel Sheppard," Rodney had said.

"Dr. McKay," John had said back, and Rodney had never known that his title could be so fucking devastating to hear when John's been calling him "McKay" or "hey, jackass."

The worst part is that Rodney always has this feeling that if he goes up to John and begs, if he cries all over him and writes lines on the board and lays it all out like a procedural plan then John's mouth might so slack and soft and their bodies might remember how to curve together again like their hands still know how to link--

But then John always looks away before Rodney can convince himself to do it, and Ronon's John's satellite these days, wary and close and watchful and Rodney knows better than to bully his way through those defenses.

 

*

At some point it becomes normal to be miserable like this, and Rodney grows complacent, goes about his normal business, and gets caught up in his work like he always does and by the time he resurfaces something has changed.

"Is Ronon stalking you?" Rodney blurts out one day, when both of them show up for a meeting early and John's so uncomfortable he's about to climb on the walls--which he can actually do, Rodney's seen him.

John looks hamstrung. "No," he says finally, and before Rodney can ask him what the hell that means, everybody else files in.

"You are not serious," Zelenka says when Rodney asks him later what he thinks is going on. "You are generally smart person--this cannot escape you."

And Rodney's so grossly insulted by the implication there he shuts up and brainstorms on it for a whole hour before he decides to go file a security report on Sheppard's behalf and detours in the mess because he's starving and sees Ronon leaning over John's shoulder to look at the file John's reading and everything clicks into place.

Rodney tells himself it's not girly to puke for half an hour over this sort of thing because it isn't and because he's a boy, but it's not a very convincing or scientific argument.

He goes to sleep and wakes up at four in the morning and makes a feverish list, hands shaking, of things he needs to do:

1\. Kill Ronon.

2\. Fix the circuitry in the north tower.

And almost as an afterthought he writes:

3\. Break up with Hartsfield. This will probably be easier than the other one.

He collapses back into bed and when he wakes up again, groggy with a roaring headache, two hours later, he rips up the to-do list and spends the entire day on his back fixing the behemoth of wires that powers the north tower, where everybody lives and wants to take showers and read.

At seven that night Rodney realizes he's gone through an entire day without thinking about John or about what he did and that it's slipping away from him, all the skin memories and images and things that made this separation unbearable, and that like with all things Rodney has wanted but not been allowed to have, he's forgetting, compartmentalizing, compromising with himself.

He's cutting John up into little, manageable pieces, and putting him away because it's easier that way, and Rodney sees no reason to fight efficiency.

Except then he sees, by complete and actual accident, Ronon leaning into John in a stairwell and John looking away and he realizes that it's not as simple as he thought.

 

*

According to directional theory, the zero line is the single most important aspect of the representation: it's the pivot, the point of no return, the chasm between philosophies that can never be crossed.

Rodney is seeing diagrams from his freshman polisci class in his head, the crappy number lines his TA used to draw on old chalkboards in the classroom and his waving arms as he talked about European pluralism and proximity theory, showed the curves of voter behavior and the logarithmic functions of politics. His shoes are loud on the floor and he's all but running toward the third floor of the north tower, where Sheppard lives and where Rodney will say, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," because Rodney forgot--all this time--he forgot to say it before.

There's something rushing and huge in his chest that feels like a second chance and he thinks that he might be breaking the experimental model, and when he steps off the transporter into the third-floor hallway he sees John under Atlantis' blue lights and says:

"I forgot to tell you."

John stares at him. "Something about?"

Rodney stares back for a second before he shakes his head and says, "Oh, yes. Sorry. I mean--that's what I forgot to tell you." John's eyes go blank. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so--I was so sorry. And I'm still so sorry, and you have to believe me when I say that I didn't ever mean to."

And his words fall away because something has washed over John's face like one of Atlantis' unsettling waves, menacing and strange, pulled by two moons.

John looks tired and far away and his mouth is open a little, face slack with surprise and this is almost the way Rodney thought it would happen only not at all, because John isn't reaching out to him and isn't saying, "It's okay, Rodney," when it's really not--he's not saying anything at all. But he's looking at Rodney like Rodney's just inked out another galaxy, put many stars to bed and cloaked all the lights in nothing but broken, smoldering solar debris.

And Rodney's hearing all of this, all of these things breaking into pieces behind John's eyes, from outer space, where everything is silent and he's dying in a vacuum, and when John says, "I wish you'd said that four months ago," Rodney reads it off of John's familiar mouth.

In directional theory, nobody ever breaches the zero line. You make your affiliation, no matter how strong, and you stay with your own, and the model, despite frequent challenges, holds up in predicting modern voter behavior, at guessing peoples' loyalties.

Rodney loathes being disingenuous, and doesn't like being predictable, but that night after John walks around him and doesn't meet his eyes, and Rodney hears Ronon's voice soft and rolling in the hallway, Rodney goes to Hartsfield to break up with him and doesn't manage to do it after all.

"What are you thinking?" Hartsfield asks later, eyes wide and brown and ordinary. Rodney can't see his own disasters in them.

"Voting behavior," Rodney says, surprising himself. He looks at Hartsfield, whose first name is Daniel, and Rodney figures he should try calling him that once in a while. "Did you ever read about directional theory in college?"

"I can't say I did," Har--Daniel says, inoffensively.

Rodney closes his eyes, and throws an arm over his face.

"In case you're wondering," he says around something hard and hurtful in his throat, "it's totally true."


End file.
